This Lifetime movie was unexpectedly well-cast and performed.I found Tracy Spiridakos as an idealistic teenager winsome and convincing in the role, and Jon Cor excelled as an ex-con trying to go straight but thwarted at every turn.The characters were uniformly well-written and conceived. As the mother of a teenage boy, I found Cami's mother and her friend to be realistically conveyed. Teenagers do risky and self-destructive things, creating incredible anxiety in their parents. It's hard for a mom to know how to respond, and this little movie conveys that well. I'll admit the characterization of Jake may have been airbrushed a bit. Would someone who had held up a store and lied to an underage lover really turn out to be as self-sacrificing as this? Maybe I'm gullible, but for me, the fact that Jake puts his life on the line to save Cami and her mom just underscored earlier indications that he wasn't such a bad guy after all. Nicely done.

The pitfalls of the internet are well explored in this 2010 film dealing with a high school honor student who meets the guy of her life online, but unknown to her, he is in jail about to be released after being imprisoned for 2 years for stealing.The real sad part of this story is that Jake isn't totally an indecent human being. Spurned by his family, he longs to do something positive in his life, but his conviction holds him back.Cami's life turns upside down when she discovers who he really is. She loves him and near tragedy ensues. The film also questions parental authority when it comes to a 17 year old.While the ending shows that the two still live in two separate worlds, we see there is still hope that Jake can be rehabilitated.

"Boy She Met Online" is a terrible title for a movie. As for the plot, it is average without many surprises. 17 year old Cami (Tracy Spiridakos) meets cute boy Jake Byers (Jon Cor) online, but the cute boy turns out to be a criminal who is tormented by serious inner demons. Then after she meets Byers, she gets into a lot of trouble with him very quickly. So there is not much special there, aside from the fact that the cute boy is not a fifty year old pedophile hunting down underage girls (which is how I expected this plot to unfold). As for the acting, Tracy Spiridakos' Cami is little more than a one-note performance of a bubbly teenage girl who likes older boys. The best thing in this movie is Jon Cor's performance as Jake Byers. Jon Cor is no where near as good as James Spader in a similar kind of role in "Jack's Back." But Cor is entertaining because his Jack Byers seems real. Essentially Jack Byers wants to be a decent person(as evidenced by his ambition to have a relationship with Cami), but his constant struggles with insecurity, despair and anger and his propensity for violence complicate his efforts to achieve this goal. Yet at the same time, the humanity of Jack Byers' shines through in confused and unexpected ways. The Jack Byers character is much deeper than one would think from a small budget film like this. Unfortunately, Byers' attempt to do something fresh and genuine is not enough for me to recommend the movie.

This Lifetime Channel Movie is a potentially interesting story of a modern variation of a middle-class concern: who is your teenage daughter's boyfriend? In this case, as the title clearly indicates, she met him online. And as it becomes apparent in the first three minutes, he's not just a stranger, he's actually a prison inmate.Unfortunately, while the idea is interesting, this movie is not. The dialogue may be realistic, but it is not interesting to listen to teenagers giggle. The lighting is the same in every scene, lots of side-lighting, but it's just as bright during the day scenes as the night scenes. And the score is intrusive, overwrought and annoying.If there is a real problem with this movie, it's that there is no modulation. Lighting, music, whiny teenage angst, every scene is at the same level. Usually when I watch TV movies, I tend to concentrate on the show and fast-forward through the commercial. Here I was strongly tempted to reverse the sequence.